Weird Things About Airtunes
Published by timbomb April 24th, 2006 in OpinionsAirtunes is Apple’s technology that lets you stream music from iTunes to an Airport Express, which in turn connects to your stereo. Net effect: I press play on my Powerbook, music comes out of my stereo downstairs. It’s dead cool.
But… some obvious things that seem easy-ish to do, yet aren’t there.
- Why does no-one sell a snap-on adapter for the iPod that lets you stream from the iPod to the Airport? (they do, it’s called a Powerbook). Probably because Apple hasn’t really published details of how Airtunes works, I guess.
- Why can’t my iTunes be an Airtunes receiver as well as a transmitter? I could switch it into passive mode, connect some nice laptop speakers and let other people stream music via my Powerbook. Sure, I can “pull” music using iTunes sharing, but why not let other people “push” as well?
The problem with so much Apple stuff is that the designs are so integrated, you keep seeing holes to plug.
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Well, there is Airfoil, which streams audio from any application via Airport Express, so you could use that in conjunction with… some imaginary application that plays mp3s that people send to you.
I’ve been searching for this very thing. When my roommate and I have houseparties we’d like to play music throughout the whole apartment. We’ve got an airport express on one end of the house and PC on the other end. If only there were some way for his PC to receive iTunes output…
Big ‘up Brooklyn!